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Synonym list in cuneiform on a clay tablet, Neo-Assyrian period [1] A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means precisely or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. [2] For example, in the English language, the words begin, start, commence, and initiate are all synonyms of one another: they are ...
A thesaurus (pl.: thesauri or thesauruses), sometimes called a synonym dictionary or dictionary of synonyms, is a reference work which arranges words by their meanings (or in simpler terms, a book where one can find different words with similar meanings to other words), [1] [2] sometimes as a hierarchy of broader and narrower terms, sometimes simply as lists of synonyms and antonyms.
This list contains Germanic elements of the English language which have a close corresponding Latinate form. The correspondence is semantic—in most cases these words are not cognates, but in some cases they are doublets, i.e., ultimately derived from the same root, generally Proto-Indo-European, as in cow and beef, both ultimately from PIE *gʷōus.
For example, a particular species could, over time, have had two or more species-rank names published for it, while the same is applicable at higher ranks such as genera, families, orders, etc. In each case, the earliest published name is called the senior synonym, while the later name is the junior synonym.
Generally, words coming from French often retain a higher register than words of Old English origin, and they are considered by some to be more posh, elaborate, sophisticated, or pretentious.
An example of a translated exonym is the name for the Netherlands (Nederland in Dutch) used, respectively, in German (Niederlande), French (Pays-Bas), Italian (Paesi Bassi), Spanish (Países Bajos), Irish (An Ísiltír), Portuguese (Países Baixos) and Romanian (Țările de Jos), all of which mean "Low Countries".
The cause for the start of the project was the arrival of OpenOffice.org in 2002, which was missing the thesaurus of its parent, StarOffice, due to its licensing.. OpenThesaurus filled that gap by importing possible synonyms from a freely available German/English dictionary and refining and updating these in crowdsourced work through the use of a web ap
Dictionaries of idioms and slang are common in most cultures. Examples include (of French) the Dictionnaire des expressions et locutions, edited by Alain Rey (Paris: Le Robert 2006), and (of English) Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (8th edition, London: Routledge 2002). [1]